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Art-Science Collaboration: Why Now?

April 27th, 2012

Over the last fifty years there have been a number of cultural movements seeking to create new connections between the arts and humanities with science and engineering. These have had differing motivations and impacts. Since 1967 the Leonardo organizations have sought to document and promote the work of artists involved in science and technology; more than 7000 artists, scientists, engineers and scholars have published through the Leonardo publications at MIT press. Roger F. Malina will provide a historical and theoretical overview of some of the areas of development and articulate why there seem to be a growing number of institutional transdisciplinary programs responding to the current situation of science and engineering in society.

There are good reasons why different disciplines are established, but in the context of networked knowledge new approaches for art-science collaboration are possible. Roger F. Malina has recently argued that translations studies may bring useful insights. He will provide illustrations from some of the art-science residencies at the new Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies, IMERA, in Marseille where a ‘Frontiers’ project has recently been initiated. It will look at how boundaries and frontiers are being re-thought in a number of areas where the techno-sciences have social consequences including biometrics, networks, and the displacement of “boundaries of the real” between cyberspace and physical space.

Roger F. Malina: Director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence, Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications MIT Press, Co-Director of the Art-Science Program at the IMERA Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies.